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Yesterday, when the Inquirer broke the story that four people accused retired Daily News sports columnist Bill Conlin of abusing them as children, Philly.com took what has become, for us, a routine step for a story of this nature: 

We turned off readers’ ability to comment on those articles.

By default, commenting is allowed on staff-written stories and columns, but there are some types of content where we do not allow commenting, including obituaries (where readers often have the option of signing a moderated online guestbook) and wire stories. But we often – not always, but often – turn off commenting on stories involving crimes, especially molestation or sex crimes.

Why do we do this? Part of the reason is that these stories are particularly sensitive. Comments can impact serious legal proceedings for the victims and the defendants. The other part of the reason is painful: the comments on those stories can be particularly nasty, blaming the victim or reverting to racist or sexist stereotypes. They don’t add to the conversation and they hurt the victims.

So, in those cases, we turn commenting off. We did this on the first Jerry Sandusky stories; we did this on Kensington Strangler stories; we do this on far less attention-grabbing stories. Not always, but often.

I should add: Personally, I am in favor of commenting on news stories online. For a long time, the news conversation was one-sided, and the best readers who wanted to respond to a story could hope for is to perhaps get one letter to the editor published from the many received. We published a lot, and readers published almost nothing.

In a lot of cases, those comments have been positive additions to our coverage. I will never forget when our commenters revealed that a local school board was posting edited video transcripts of its school board meetings. The comments led to coverage, and the school board quickly reversed its position and posted the full video.

However, I am heartbroken by how some have chosen to use this platform. So, for now, when we have to, we use the crude tool of turning comments off.

But this story is also unusual because it involves a former employee. Readers have said that they want to be able to talk about it, and we want to ensure we are as transparent as possible regarding this story.

We have heard our readers, and we have added commenting to the stories (join in here).

This commenting is highly moderated. We’re devoting special staffing to it, and we’ll keep it up as this story plays out.

And in the long term, we are devoted to finding a better solution to commenting. Right now, we are testing a new way to comment requiring Facebook logins (you can see a test of that on staff-produced articles in our Entertainment section now; here’s an example.)

We’re hoping that requiring the use of real names will encourage better commenting behavior and improve the tone of our comments; assuming this test is successful – and so far, it’s encouraging – we will roll this out to other sections of our site.

In the meantime, thank you for reading. Feel free to leave us a comment below on these changes, or email me directly here.

Wendy Warren

Editor
Philly.com

This weekend’s storm may make it difficult for readers of our newspapers' print editions to find an outlet to purchase the paper, or to have it delivered in some areas.

If you cannot get Sunday’s Inquirer or Monday’s Daily News or Inquirer, you will find all the news from both papers here on Philly.com.

In addition, we've provided free access to our digital editions of both The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News; just click on the links below. This free access will continue until Tuesday.

Thanks for reading Philly.com, the Inquirer and the Daily News.

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CLICK HERE for free access to the digital edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

CLICK HERE for free access to the digital edition of the Philadelphia Daily News.

Once a decade, City Council changes something important. It re-draws the maps that dictate which Councilpeople represent which neighborhoods.

For every Philadelphia citizen, redistricting means one important voice that represents your street could change. But it can be a process that's more about politics than good government. Already this year, City Council has been criticized for not having enough public hearings on the process. (They are now having two.)

But a Philly tech firm believes you need a voice in this process - and that you're smart enough to try drawing your own City Council districts. Azavea has built a web site that allows you to propose which neighborhoods should go in which council districts. It even layers in the best practices around redistricting, helping you to build a Council map that distributes the votes fairly and prevents gerrymandering.

Try it out at www.fixphillydistricts.com, a project that is being supported by Azavea, Philly.com, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Penn Project for Civic Engagement and Newsworks. They are hosting a contest for the best-drawn district.

And if you need a little help getting started, Azavea is hosting a webinar tonight at 6:30 p.m. that explains the software. You can sign up for this free webinar here.

Seems like, even when public hearings are scarce, public involvement can happen - especially when Philly's tech community gets involved. Philly.com is proud to participate in this project, and we hope you will, too. If you are joining in, tell us by tweeting @phillydotcom.

Philly.com is excited to announce the launch of a fun new feature geared toward creating and rewarding a stronger community of users on the site.

Starting today, registered users will begin collecting points and virtual rewards - trophies and badges - for completing certain activities on Philly.com: visiting the site, reading articles and commenting on stories.

Throughout the site and on your My Profile page, you’ll see a few ‘widgets’ displaying top users and current activity on Philly.com. Your point total and trophies will also appear each time you leave a comment.

If you’re not a registered user on the site, click here to register and join the fun.

Powered by Badgeville, winner of the 2010 Audience Choice award at TechCrunch Disrupt, this feature opens a new frontier of combining content with community. We realize many of our users are very passionate and active on Philly.com, and are excited to recognize their dedication in a fun and engaging way.

More activities will be added in the future (sharing stories on Facebook and Twitter is in the works), and we would love your feedback on how this functionality could enhance your Philly.com experience. You can leave us comments below or email badges@philly.com.

Today, Philly.com debuts a new navigation bar and a few other tweaks to the look of our news and features pages. We’d love to tell you why we made these changes, and we want to hear what you think about them.

Our new navigation has one primary goal: To help you find more to read and do on our site, more quickly. We have debuted drop-down menus so you can go directly to more of the great content of Philly.com, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News with a single click. Popular blogs and inside sections are easier to find. And common search terms are listed right on the search box.

The topper itself is much shallower than it used to be, which allows us to showcase content higher on our pages. Popular stories, chats and other content can be linked from the home page navigation bar.

And the design is simpler, which helps content take center stage. In addition, we’ve lightened the look of some of our other pages.

We consider this a step forward, not a redesign. There’s still a lot we want to do to improve Philly.com and to make it easier for you to use. But it’s a big step, and we want to hear what you think about it.

There are three ways you can respond. You can:

• Take our survey about the new navigation
   
• Comment on this blog post, or
   
• E-mail us at feedback@philly.com.

We are certain to tweak and adjust this new navigation – and make other site changes – in the weeks ahead, and your input will help guide our decisions.

Finally, thank you, for both your readership and your input. We are committed to continually improving Philly.com, making it better and easier for you to use. And we’re grateful for your help as we do so.

Sincerely,

The Philly.com team

Ryan Davis, president

Wendy Warren, editor

PS: Big thanks to all the folks who had a hand in designing and building the new navigation: Chris Corter, Jill Hoover, Gregg Meyer, Nadya Harvey, Radu Metente, Amanda Gilanyi, Bob McGovern, Joe Friend, Ian Krantz, Kevin Burkett, Chris Meares and the Philly.com content team.

To our readers:

Philly.com is testing a new way to find content on our site, and we want to know what you think.

As you can see here, we are beta-testing new navigation for the top of Philly.com’s news and features pages. We’re excited about it for several reasons:

• Our new topper uses large drop-down menus, helping readers click directly to content within Philly.com. Now, readers can quickly find popular blogs, stories and inside sections from almost any page on Philly.com.
   
• The topper itself is much shallower, which allows us to feature content higher on our pages. Important stories, chats, or videos can be linked from the navigation bar itself. The topper has a simpler design that lets our stories take center stage.
   
• Registered users can sign in directly from any page of the site. Meanwhile, common search terms are easier to find, just one click from any page of the site.

We’ve made a few other tweaks to improve the experience - we eliminated that heavy brown bar on the right side of our pages, for example.

We are proud of the wealth of journalism that we offer on Philly.com, thanks to the skilled and experienced journalists of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. And we hope this will help you find that work more easily.

We’re eager to hear what you think, and what other changes you’d suggest for our site. Please take a look at the new navigation and take the brief survey that will follow.

If you have any further ideas, e-mail us.

We’ll continue to develop this navigation, with your input. We plan to roll it out to Philly.com’s news and features sections this fall.

Thank you for your help, and for reading Philly.com,

The Philly.com team

Ryan Davis, president

Wendy Warren, editor

PS: Big thanks to the team who developed the new topper: Chris Corter, Jill Hoover, Gregg Meyer, Nadya Harvey, Radu Metente, Joe Friend, Kevin Burkett and Chris Meares.